Context Relevant ( www.contextrelevant.com ) announced today it raised $1.3 million in seed funding, which will be used to accelerate the development of its Flexible Analytics and Statistics Technology(TM) (FAST). Madrona Venture Group ( www.madrona.com ) — which has a long history of backing successful technology companies such as Amazon.com and Isilon Systems –led the round. Notable angels, including Geoff Entress and members of the founding team of Swype (now part of Nuance), including Mike McSherry, Cliff Kushler and Mark Illing also invested.

Although Big Data represents an enormous opportunity for enterprise, its sheer volume — which is growing exponentially — coupled with the acute shortage of data scientists is preventing businesses from capitalizing ...